[p.vii]In 1985 when Alan Cherry suggested that I do an oral history project on LDS Afro-Americans, I had no idea that eight years later I would be publishing a book on the subject. At the time I was so wrapped up in finishing Mormon Polygamous Families that I was not sure what I would do once that project was finished. Because my mind was elsewhere, Alan’s involvement in the new venture was essential. He developed the outline, contacted the people, and conducted the interviews. As I finished my first book and became more interested in the experiences of black Mormons, he spent hours talking to me. Whatever understanding I have of African Americans and especially LDS Afro-Americans developed from the spark that Alan lit.

Alan and his wife, Janice Marie Barkum Cherry, one of the people interviewed, have continued to encourage me. They never laughed at my cultural naivete; they patiently answered questions when I did not understand black American culture. Alan and Janice are treasured friends.

I am also grateful for all of the people who agreed to be interviewed as part of the LDS Afro-American Oral History Project. While not every one of them is quoted in this book, each helped me in developing my ideas. Since I have read through the interviews several times, I feel as though I know them well. When I visit the Oakland, California, 9th Branch, Rodney Carey laughs and says to whomever is around, “This is the person who knows my life story better than I do.”

I have enjoyed meeting other women and men involved in the interviews. I gained new insights from the eight who spoke at the LDS Afro-American Symposium at Brigham Young University on the tenth [p.viii]anniversary of blacks receiving the priesthood. I have fond memories of meeting Burgess Owens, Nathleen Albright, Johnnie McKoy, Jerri Harwell, Robert Stevenson, Cleeretta Smiley, Cathy Stokes, and Emanuel Reid. I’ll always remember giving a fireside in San Pedro, California, and prize my early morning telephone calls from Beverly Perry. Whenever I hear the hymn “Amazing Grace,” I will remember Gabrielle Smith’s wedding and then recall her accepting me into black circles as an honorary member. I could give numerous examples of where this project has broadened my horizons and enabled me to meet people and understand another culture.

The project not only gave me a chance to meet blacks, I also have had rewarding experiences with people who helped process the interviews. These included Natalie Ethington, Barbara Lyman, Irene Fuja, Kyra Larsen Swain, Rhonda Coursey, Kristine Judd Ireland, Elizabeth Robbins Austin, Julie Greenland, Paul Hillyard, Teresa Yancey Wilson, and Rebecca Ream Vorimo. And while I have not kept in contact with all of them, I value their contribution to the study.

A colleague at BYU once told me that another project I was working on fell in the cracks between sociology and history. I am discovering that much of what I do slips into those crevices. Yet I don’t have the sociological training to pull the material out. I am indebted to Cardell Jacobson, a professor of sociology at BYU, for helping me with the survey, running cross tabs, and answering my questions. I especially appreciate his help in co-authoring two chapters in this book.

Although I am committed to more than simply placing oral history transcripts on the shelf in the BYU library, writing this book was difficult. I had reached a hurdle that I could not get over in 1991 and was ready to give up. Fortunately, Roger D. Launius came to speak at a Redd Center conference that year and encouraged me to keep working on the manuscript. Without his faith, this book would have died.

Once the rough draft was completed, my sister Janet, my ever-faithful friend and critic, edited the manuscript. Then I hired Lavina Fielding Anderson to go through the text. Once her work was completed, Cardell Jacobson, Kris Nelson, and Rebecca Ream Vorimo read the entire manuscript and offered valuable suggestions. Newell Bringhurst loaned me his collection of articles from the LDS Church News. He also read the complete manuscript and gave me suggestions. John [p.ix]Sillito also helped improve the manuscript. In addition, Roger Launius and Armand Mauss read chapters and pointed out weaknesses. Rachel Nathan read the entire edited final copy, and Kris Nelson read the page proofs. They both found some embarrassing errors. Kris Nelson also helped with the index.

During winter semester 1994 at BYU I taught a class on LDS ethnic groups in the United States, and my students read the manuscript. I appreciate their support and encouragement, as well.

Since 1979 when I was hired as the Oral History Program Director at the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at BYU I have had the opportunity to work with outstanding directors. Thomas G. Alexander and William A. Wilson have been extremely supportive. They have let me select my own projects and then supported me completely. This book is a product of that backing.

Yet when all is said and done, I am the one who wrote the book. I hope that I have done justice to all of these people—especially the men and women whose stories I retell. Several times people have told me that they have used my article in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought which explored the advantages and disadvantages of separate black branches or integrated wards to better understand the concerns of LDS African Americans. I hope this study will be as useful in promoting racial and ethnic understanding.

Introduction

[p.xi]I grew up in a small Mormon community in northern Utah where everyone belonged to the same church. I only realized that I lived in a “Mormon culture” when my family moved to Iran when I was in elementary school and later to Missouri when I was in junior high school. Even then my parents sought out the LDS church, and while I went to school with children from other backgrounds, my life still revolved around Mormonism.

It took years before I knew I spoke a different religious language than my non-Mormon acquaintances. For me a “stake house” was where Mormons meet in stake conference, not where “steaks” are eaten. I didn’t realize that my definitions of bishop, baptism, and blessings differed from those of Catholic and Protestant Americans.

My contact with African Americans in Logan, Utah, was even more limited. The only blacks in the community were basketball and football players recruited to play for Utah State University. They were my heroes, and I could have qualified for “sports fan of the year.” But I didn’t realize that while I idealized them I also stereotyped them: “All blacks are good athletes.” I didn’t know that other Mormons in the community feared these students and believed that “all black men are oversexed and after white women.”

I was so naive that in Missouri I did not understand why all the black students “got” to sit on the back row. The rest of us had to sit in alphabetical order. The school praised itself on being “liberal” and “integrated.” After all they elected a black basketball player as student body president one semester. Yet as I look back, I realize that whites held all the other leadership positions. There [p.xii]were no blacks in the pep club (where I was readily accepted even though I was a newcomer). The school was integrated, but for the most part blacks were invisible.

I did not really get to know an African American until I met Alan Cherry in 1985. Later I met other blacks and started to see them as individuals rather than stereotypes. I began to feel a part of “them.” I considered it a compliment when Gabrielle Smith implied that I was an honorary African American (although I am sure my Southern grandmother turned over in her grave).

I still knew nothing about African American culture when I attended a Pentecostal service in a black church in Oakland, California. I was the only white in the congregation; I had become the minority. I felt welcomed, but as I listened to the music and the sermon, I realized I had entered another world.

LDS African Americans face the same dilemma as they leave one culture and join a completely new one. Just as when I attended the Pentecostal church, it is not just that the people they meet are a different color. The Mormon church comprises a distinctive new culture. Black Mormons are essentially caught between two different worlds. How are Latter-day Saint African Americans able to make that transfer? How are they accepted into a new culture? What is the reaction of their black friends and relatives? And how do white Mormons respond?

These are not new questions for African Americans. Those who grew up prior to the 1960s dealt with segregated schools, restrooms, and drinking fountains and with designated seating on buses and in theaters. Civil disobedience led to political changes during the 1960s, but not automatically or necessarily to unequivocal acceptance. Integration and discrimination exist together as realities in their lives.

These may be old concerns for some, but they are new ones for Latter-day Saints. Although the Mormon church has expanded to all sectors within American society, its growth among African Americans would have been impossible two decades ago. Up until 1978 black men could not be ordained to the LDS priesthood, and black men and women could not be married in Mormon temples or receive the “temple endowment” ordinance. Mormon missionaries, normally encouraged to share their message with anyone who would listen, were discouraged from teaching blacks. Since the 1978 announcement [p.xiii]lifting the restrictions, missionaries have actively sought out blacks, and many—though not statistically significant—African Americans have joined.

According to surveys, most African Americans are still more comfortable in traditional black churches. But the fact that their ranks in Mormonism have grown to thousands raises questions about what they see in a church that previously excluded them from full participation. This is a question not only for Mormons but for the sociology of religion as well. What changes are taking place in the black community that allow some black members to leave their traditional churches and join another church with such strong ties that it has been called an ethnic group?1 How are blacks accepted, and how do they adapt to new religious teachings?

These questions are not easy to answer. First, it is impossible to find out exactly how many African Americans belong to the LDS church. Membership records do not mention race. But for those who are identifiable, how are they doing in what one historian has called the American “Reader’s Digest” church,2 and how willing are they to share their experiences?

The LDS church is growing outside the United States, most notably in Latin America. It has also grown in Africa, where missionary work was not started until after the 1978 revelation. In areas such as Africa where the majority is black, the number of black members is much easier to determine. This book could study the remarkable growth among blacks throughout the world, yet the experiences of blacks in Africa would be much different than those in the United States, the Caribbean, or Brazil.

This book could also discuss the whys and hows of priesthood restriction. Several important studies have already asked that [p.xiv]question.3 Instead this study is based on oral history interviews and a mail survey conducted with LDS African Americans. The underlying message of this book is that these black Mormons, though sharing a common ethnic group background, are separate individuals joining a religious movement. While they share some common experiences, each man and woman is unique.

This book could have been written as a faith-promoting study along the lines of Hartman and Connie Rector’s No More Strangers (1971-90), and argue, “Look at how well blacks have been accepted into the church.’ Or it could come to the opposite conclusion: “Look at how blacks have been discriminated against.” In this book there are elements of both because blacks have had mixed experiences. Many blacks feel that they are accepted by their white Latter-day Saint counterparts, but not necessarily understood or valued for their cultural differences. Some want more association with other LDS blacks; others want to blend in with the mainstream. I use historical and sociological theories to try to better understand these conflicting experiences. In the end there may be more questions than answers, but I try to provide insight into the experiences of African-American Mormons.

This study is based on two data sets: the LDS Afro-American Oral History Project interviews and the LDS Afro-American Survey responses. In 1985 Alan Cherry, a black Latter-day Saint, suggested that the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University conduct oral history interviews with LDS Afro-Americans. The Redd Center agreed and hired Cherry as a consultant. He interviewed a total of 224 black Latter-day Saints.

The interviews were valuable, but they revealed the need for a sample with more focused questions. Therefore, the Redd Center sent a mail survey to black Latter-day Saints throughout the United States. Approximately 200 people returned the survey. This book is a “group [p.xv]biography” of those who participated in the oral history project and the survey.

The perception of the Mormon church has been changing since the 1950s. It is generally no longer considered a “cult.” But it has not completely broken out of its western American model, and blacks are not completely integrated. Consequently the story of African American Mormons is not without problems. Yet despite the dilemmas, most black Latter-day Saints look beyond the past to the role they can play in the church. The LDS African American experience is one of integration and discrimination, yet it promises hope for assimilation as black and white Mormons replace stereotypes with individual faces.

Notes:

1. Sociologists Armand L. Mauss and Keith Parry discuss the concept of Mormonism as an ethnic group. See Mauss, ‘Mormons as Ethnics: Variable Historical and International Implications of an Appealing Concept,’ and Parry, “Mormons as Ethnics: A Canadian Perspective,” in B. Y. Card et al, The Mormon Presence in Canada (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1990).